If you haven't noticed, DHS released the Chemical Facility
Antiterrorism Standards' Appendix A last week:
http://www.dhs.gov/chemicalsecurity
The rules seems to have taken many of the comments from the laboratory
community into account. But, there are public perception issues, as
expressed in the New York Times:
>
> November 7, 2007
> Editorial
> Chemical Industry 1, Public Safety 0
> Air travelers are asking for trouble if they show up for a flight
> with 3.5 ounces of shampoo in their carry-on bags. But the
> Department of Homeland Security has decided that the government
> should not even trouble chemical plants to account for the storage
> of anything under 2,500 pounds of deadly chlorine. The department’s
> new rules on reporting stockpiles of toxic chemicals, issued last
> week, have certainly made the industry happy. They should make the
> public worried.
>
> Chemical plants — and petroleum plants, paper mills and other
> industrial facilities that use dangerous chemicals — are one of the
> nation’s greatest vulnerabilities. An attack on such a facility
> could create a deadly chemical cloud that would put hundreds of
> thousands of people in danger. Just consider the result of an
> accidental train derailment in North Dakota in 2002 — a cloud of
> deadly chemicals hundreds of feet high and several miles long — and
> magnify it by what would happen if terrorists planned and carried
> out an attack in a highly populated area.
>
> The government should be doing everything it can to guard against
> such catastrophes.
>
> The Bush administration has shown repeatedly, however, that it does
> not want to impose reasonable safety requirements on chemical
> plants. That may have to do with its general opposition to
> regulations, or it could be connected to the enormous amount of
> money the chemical industry spends on lobbying and campaign
> contributions. The industry does not want to bear the expense of
> serious safety rules, and it fights them furiously. In a recent
> study, Greenpeace reported that the chemical industry spent more
> money in a year lobbying to defeat strong chemical plant legislation
> than the Department of Homeland Security spent on chemical plant
> security.
>
> The rules the department issued last week are far too lax about when
> facilities need to report stockpiles of chemicals like chlorine,
> fluorine and hydrogen fluoride to the government. According to the
> new rules, which watered-down proposed rules that the department had
> released in April, a chemical plant does not have to report the
> storage of 2,499 pounds of chlorine, even if it is located in a
> populated area — or across from an elementary school.
>
> If 450 pounds of chlorine are stolen, enough to cause mass
> casualties, the theft need not be reported. Chlorine has been used
> by insurgents in Iraq, and it is high on the list of chemicals that
> should be kept out of terrorists’ hands.
>
> It is troubling that these industry-friendly rules were developed in
> part by Department of Homeland Security employees who previously
> worked for the chemical industry — and who may one day work for it
> again. Rick Hind, the legislative director of the Greenpeace Toxics
> Campaign, contends that such employees have had an “undue
> influence.” The department says it draws on former chemical industry
> workers simply because of their “relevant prior experience.”
>
> Bennie Thompson, the Mississippi Democrat who is chairman of the
> House Homeland Security Committee, has rightly compared the chemical
> storage rules to “putting a Band-Aid on a broken leg.” Congress
> needs to step in now and pass a strong new chemical plant law — one
> that puts more weight on the safety of the public and less on
> industry’s bottom line.
>
>
>
>

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